Jim Hillibish: Cell mania at 10,000 feet, credit cards accepted

The FAA is considering allowing us to use our cellphones on airliners. Can you imagine being trapped on a jet with 298 people, of which 50 percent at any one instant are yammering into their cells?

"I can't hear you."

"You're dropping out."

"Did you say Jeannie's divorcing Al?"

"Did Fido poop this morning?"

It's enough to make you choke on your $7 peanuts. It's captive social mania. It ends the last place on earth you could escape your cell. Sigh.

Then the racket wakes up the babies napping to the lullaby of the jet turbines. By now, you're looking for a parachute.

Used to be, there was this totally impolite thing called eavesdropping. Our mothers lectured us — "listening in" was a sin. We were all on party telephone lines, not in the current sense of party. We had to share the line with neighbors.

There were easily amused people who enjoyed listening in to conversations. Some would get so involved, they would break in, creating the world's first conference calls. NSA today would recruit them. According to my mom, they all went to hell.

It will be so loud on jets, the attendants will learn sign language. There will be no respite as the ruling includes unlimited battery charging. Boeing never imagined they'd be building flying telephone booths.

I asked around, and yes, travelers welcome the mayhem. You could always tell the cell-addicted on planes. They'd thumb their phones out of habit, impatient to hit the gate and blitz-call their phone book.

There was evidence that cellphones interrupted the navigation systems on airliners. There was a chance you'd fly to Chicago and wind up over the ocean. With autopilots, pilots no longer fly. They play Jewels on their cells while the plane flies itself.

Then arrived another suspicion. Computers control everything on jets. They must talk to each other. Aunt Mary's psoraisis report to her daughter could, technically, cause burps.

So phone calls were banned, but under the new scheme, once the plane reaches 10,000 feet, unleash the cells.

There's more involved here than meets the ear. If you haven't noticed, airlines turn profits not from flying, which is a loss leader. The real cash cow is the extra fees.

Let's see: $58 per flight for a cell permit, $16 to charge the phone, $11 for wrong numbers, $8 for thinking about your phone but not using it.

This is the chump change. The big bucks are in the seating. Just like they segregated smokers years ago, there will be "quiet-seating" cabin space where cells are strictly banned, $245. The only alternative would be renting sound-canceling headphones, $13 an hour.

We don't care. Desperate to find out what Fido did this morning in the back yard.